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The focus of Thematic Working Group 1 (TWG1) at EDUsummIT 2017 centred on the need for alignment in education systems and was driven by two key questions relating to a) if and how all the parts of an education system work together to support the type of learning envisioned in the 21st century, and b) if there is alignment, what is the purpose/vision of that education system and does it meet the needs of its learners. Arising from the discussions held, the group advocated the use of a tool such as the UNESCO framework (2008, 2011) as a way to conceptualize a systemic approach to reform and to enable policy makers and stakeholders in a system to think about ways in which they can align changes with the goals of any proposed reform. Taking the Irish Education system as an example, this paper illustrates how the UNESCO framework has enabled policy makers in Ireland to adopt a systemic approach to policy formulation which aligns educational strategies across a range of elements "to leverage strengths, coordinate investments, consolidate gains, and advance national development goals and visions" (Kozma, 2005, p.148). To counter the potential danger of a top-down imposition of the UNESCO framework, the group also proposed the Educational Vision and Mission Framework (EVMF) as a tool to support system wide (both top-down and bottom-up) reflection on the purposes of schooling in a rapidly changing world. The group concluded that what is defined as the purpose of education should inform alignment and suggest that application of the UNESCO framework and EVMF could enable the necessary alignment to support the educational, social, and economic transformation necessary for the complex connected global world of today and tomorrow. Keywords Alignment Schools Educational visionPurpose of education
This paper describes "Empowering Minds," a collaboration between the MIT Media Laboratory, St. Patrick's College, and Irish primary school teachers. In this project, we are introducingLEGO Mindstorms technology into Irish primary schools, along with a framework for teacher professional development that centrally recognizes teachers' passions and interests in bringing about pedagogical change.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative model of teacher professional learning that has evolved over a decade (2006 to 2016). Design/methodology/approach Working in a range of different school contexts, in conjunction with an ongoing engagement with the research literature, has enabled the development over three phases of a robust yet flexible framework that meets teachers’ expressed needs. At the same time, the framework helps to shift teachers’ pedagogical orientations, as the learning design supports school-focused, job-embedded teacher professional learning, which challenges more traditional instructional environments by infusing digital technologies and other elements of twenty-first century skills into teaching and learning. Findings Building on the experiences of the first two phases, the paper reports the most recent phase which expands on the emergence of a fourth wave of online learning to design and develop a massive open online course (MOOC) that potentially enables the massive scaling up of access to this already validated model of teacher professional development. The importance of maintaining key elements, threshold concepts and signature pedagogies in the design of MOOCs for teacher professional learning are discussed, and the paper concludes with early lessons from this latest work in progress. Originality/value Challenges are identified relating to the design of the social supports within the MOOC structure to sustain the collaboration, dialogue and ongoing reflection observed across Phases 1 and 2 that are necessary for the changes in pedagogical orientation and classroom practices.
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